Clinton Not Impressed by Universe’s Cruel Sense of Irony

After Hillary Clinton left her job as secretary of state and before she “officially” decided to run for president, she gave a series of paid speeches at investment banks like Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank. If you remember hearing about them, it’s probably because they were Exhibit A in Donald Trump’s case against “Crooked Hillary,” alongside The E-mails (Exhibit B). The speeches were proof, according to Trump, that Goldman Sachs had “total control” over his opponent and that she was therefore unfit for the highest office in the land. Absent the actual details of what Clinton said, it was easy enough for Trump—not to mention Bernie Sanders—to insinuate that Clinton had colluded with Wall Street to sell ordinary Americans up the river and must have told everyone in the audience they could count on her to screw over the little guy once in office.

Of course, as leaked transcripts revealed last fall, Clinton obviously didn’t say any of that. Her dry, conventional speeches indicated only that she understood how Wall Street works and how to encourage industry participants to be proactive in rooting out bad behavior. Still, getting paid $225,000 a pop in the wake of the financial crisis—and likely knowing she was going to run for office a fews years later—wasn’t the best look, as Clinton herself admits in her new election postmortem, What Happened.

“My opponents spun wild tales about what terrible things I must have said behind closed doors and how as president I would be forever in the pocket of the shadowy bankers who had paid my speaking fees. I should have seen that coming,” Clinton writes in excerpts obtained by Bloomberg. “When you know why you’re doing something and you know there’s nothing more to it and certainly nothing sinister, it’s easy to assume that others will see it the same way.” Ultimately, she says, she realized the speeches were “a mistake.” “Just because many former government officials have been paid large fees to give speeches, I shouldn’t have assumed it would be okay for me to do it. Especially after the financial crisis of 2008-2009, I should have realized it would be bad ‘optics’ and stayed away from anything having to do with Wall Street. I didn’t. That’s on me.”

Some have encouraged Clinton to move on. Others suggest she shouldn’t have written What Happened in the first place. But there are certain indignities that Clinton, apparently, cannot forgive—including, but not limited to, slights by Sanders, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Vladimir Putin, and James Comey, all of whom receive their share of criticism for Clinton’s loss. Among the most galling, for Clinton, was Trump’s whiplash-fast about-face from populist crusader to . . . hiring half a dozen people from Goldman Sachs. One minute he was criticizing Clinton and Ted Cruz for their ties to Goldman Sachs and accusing Lloyd Blankfein of being part of a “global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class”; the next minute he was naming a former Goldman partner his Treasury secretary and poaching its second-most-powerful employee for chief economic adviser.

For the people who actually believed the ex-Miss Universe owner, who never misses an opportunity to brag about how rich he is, was actually serious about the populist, anti-Wall Street themes he shouted from the lectern, that must have come as a shock. For Clinton, the turnaround generated another emotion: unbridled rage.

“When I read the news that he filled his team with Wall Street bankers after relentlessly accusing me of being their stooge, I nearly threw the remote control at the wall.”

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S&P hits record high as Irma proves to be merely terrible, not cataclysmic

For the last five days, Hurricane Irma has ripped through the Caribbean and Florida, destroying islands, leaving millions without power, killing at least 44 people, and displacing many more who will be unable to return home any time soon. Those are objectively horrible outcomes. But for investors, the fact that it was expected to be significantly worse, but wasn’t, was cause for celebration. On Monday, the S&P 500 rose 1.1 percent to close at a record 2,488.11, while the Dow Jones climbed 259.58 points to close at 22,057.37. “We think Hurricane Irma could be a top 5 most costly hurricane in the U.S, although the losses could be in-line-to-lower than market expectations,” JPMorgan analyst Sarah DeWittwrote in a note to clients on Monday.

Also helping turn things positive was the decision by North Korean dictator Kim Jong Unnot to mark the country’s anniversary over the weekend by launching a missile or dropping a hydrogen bomb. “That North Korea didn’t do anything, on a weekend they knew our country was going to be in flux because of hurricanes, is the primary reason we’re seeing this big rally,” market strategist JJ KinahantoldThe Wall Street Journal. “The market has gone back up to where we were in early August before these North Korea fears.”

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen and President Donald Trump’s daughter and adviser Ivanka had a breakfast meeting on July 17 at the U.S. central bank, according to Yellen’s public schedule, posted earlier this month on the Fed website. Eight days after their one-hour meeting in a private dining room at the Fed, the president told the Wall Street Journal that Yellen was “in the running, absolutely,” for a second term as chair. The Fed declined to comment on the meeting.

Hedge fund that literally has thing called “public hangings” in its handbook bristles at suggestion it criticizes employees in front of their peers

In interviews with nearly 50 current and former Bridgewater employees, including several chosen by Mr. Dalio, The New York Times found that he is driven to enforce his rules to ensure that they survive at the firm. Some senior executives have been taken to task in “public hangings”—one of the Principles meant to “deter bad behavior”—when they break the rules . . . Meetings occasionally last for hours, sometimes simply because of a debate over why certain subjects are on the agenda or the quality of an employee’s presentation. Workers described being publicly berated for not completing homework assignments related to the firm’s culture or, sometimes, for “below-the-bar thinking.” In one of the firm’s more memorable case studies—videotaped episodes of events at Bridgewater that employees review and analyze—a female employee burst into tears during a group interrogation.

Elsewhere!

Goldman Says So Many Investors Are Expecting a Market Correction That Means It Likely Won’t Happen (CNBC)